1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a developing member, a process cartridge and an electrophotographic image forming apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
As an image forming method to be employed by an electrophotographic image forming apparatus such as a copying machine or an optical printer, a developing method using a non-magnetic one-component toner is known. Specifically, a photoconductor that is a rotatable electrostatic latent image carrier is charged by a charging member such as a charging roller, and an electrostatic latent image is formed on the surface of the charged photoconductor through exposure with a laser beam. Next, in a developing apparatus included in the image forming apparatus, a toner held in a developer container is applied onto a developing member by a developer supplying member and a developer amount regulating member, and the electrostatic latent image is developed with the toner in a contact part between the photoconductor and the developing member. Thereafter, the toner image thus formed on the photoconductor is transferred onto a recording material in a transfer part through or not through an intermediate transfer body, the toner image is fixed onto the recording material with heat and pressure in a fixing part, and the recording material having the fixed image thereon is discharged out of the image forming apparatus.
In this image forming method, the developing apparatus has, for example, the following constitution: A developing roller is provided so as to cover an opening of the developer container holding a toner and to be partially exposed to the outside of the container to have an exposed portion opposing a photoconductor. A developer supplying member for supplying the toner to the developing roller and a developer amount regulating member for forming a toner layer on the developing member so as to regulate the amount of toner present on the developing member to be constant are provided within the developer container. After developing an electrostatic latent image, the toner remaining on the developing member is scraped off by the developer supplying member, and the thus collected toner is mixed with the toner held in the developer container.
As for the developing member used in such a non-magnetic one-component developing method, in order to attain uniform charge imparting property for a toner and uniform toner conveying property, a technique in which minute irregularities are formed on the surface of the developing member by allowing fine resin particles to be contained in a resin used for forming a surface layer of the developing member has been proposed (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H11-065265).